Hyperion
by Lorelis
Summary: Sirius Black is an enigma. And Ray Seltzer is not one to let secrets go by, unraveled. Alternatively, of Muggle poetry, leather jackets, rock 'n roll, and cross-country misadventures.
1. Prologue

I'm writing this one solely because I _**adore**_ the living hell out of Sirius Black, and the idea of somehow weaving him into '70s (well, nearly '80s) culture is something I've dreamed of for ages. So yes, this book is invariably going to be a bunch of pretentious drivel.

Disclaimer: The author claims no ownership over the Harry Potter series, or the works associated with it.

Warning for language. Oh, and sex (not really), drugs (not quite), and rock 'n roll (an overload), baby.

* * *

 _ **Hyperion**_

* * *

Leigh's Bar was not a dance club, thank you very much. The dingy old place had thrived long before most of these disco-dancing bogues were in the womb. It had seen eons of rock come and go- hell, it was where my mom had, in her groupie heydays, met (and shagged, if auntie's accounts are anything to go by) Mick Jagger himself.

A perpetual miasma of cigarette smoke, sour, flat beer, and acrid cologne curled around its worn mahogany-and-red-velvet interiors, but it smelled like home. Twanging, crooning guitars for the blues, hollow riffs for rock 'n roll, sprawling, dreamy solos for prog-rock, and the rough, metallic synergy of punk; these were the sounds that I'd grown up listening to, within the walls of this very enigmatic establishment.

William Leigh Jr., or Bill, as patrons called him, was rather fond of me. "Now, Seltzer, you've got a real charm for the guitar. Don't see why you should be indulgin' in this punk nonsense. It ain't real music, that's what. Mark my words, little lassie: rock is dead, and ain't no leather-wearin' chainsmoker gonna revive it," he'd say, in a very _and that's that_ tone .

Well, leather-wearing chainsmoker though I might be, pseudo-anarchist I was not. The girls and I, we liked to have our fun, if that's what Bill meant by "punk". We did what the boys had been doing for years; simple as that.

We were putting up a show that night- the old codger would get us in at half the price he paid the other acts, but it was free publicity, and a hell of a good time, so we didn't really mind. Besides, on a good day, there was the off-chance that a fellow from a label might be hanging around. Leigh's was the sort of place where you'd find the ones who still adored Zeppelin; the office-workers who'd had musical ambitions at the dawn of the '70s; the ex-groupies looking to share the wild stories of their youth; biker dudes that were a bit out of loop with today's scene; and so forth.

One thing that bought all of Leigh's patrons together was their common hatred of disco and punk. Which was precisely why we'd included both stuff by Donna Summer and the Sex Pistols, with some Blondie thrown in to provide middle-ground.

Hey, if we were forced to play the cover band, we could cover whatever the hell we wanted to. Even if it meant getting leered at by the crowd (which tended to happen, anyway, once they saw we were all chicks with electrics that were actually plugged in).

The crowd and atmosphere were much the same that night. Dingy, smokey room, dingy, smokey people. A bunch of bikers with slicked-back hair were ogling my legs in their thigh-highs. Shouts of "You sure you can lift that, sweetcheeks?" as Machia, our dainty guitarist, slung her red-as-sin Ibanez over her shoulder. "The soundcheck's better than the real deal," as we began twanging and tuning our instruments.

"Good evenin', you chauvinistic fuckers!" And before the inevitable booing could follow, Valerie beat her drumsticks in the air, and we began our first number.

* * *

I loved the lights on my sweat-soaked face; I loved the feel of my Les Paul's leather strap against my (more often than not) bare shoulder; I loved the little moments of perfect synchronization we had: Lottie's heady bass lines, Valerie's deep, rolling drum solos, Machia's alternations between earthy acoustic and twanging electric, my effervescent riffs, and our dreamy vocals. We fizzed, we burned, we taunted the audience, and made eyes at the biker boys. It was a tobacco-scented heaven.

I also adored the smooth façade of my on-stage persona. Confident, outspoken, promiscuous. All cherry-tinted lips, ripped fishnets, and smudged eyeliner. Sweet as saccharine, with a bitter aftertaste.

It was this act that boys fell for; they lapped it up like half-starved dogs. That's why none of them stayed around that often. Painting my face and wearing black seemed insignificant, but I was a chameleon to my surroundings. If I looked like a delinquent, I acted like one. And at home, in my boyshorts, curled up with my crumbling copies of poetry books I'd flicked from libraries, reading glasses falling off my nose, I was the farthest I could be from Seltzer.

Boys don't like something they can't predict, after all.

It was cold; my breath fanned out in wisps as I leaned against the curb with an unlit cigarette dangling between my lips, hands in my pockets in their quest for a lighter. A scuffling brought my attention the motorcycle parked against the wall- and its owner, who was surreptitiously held out a lighter for my use. I raised an eyebrow, accepting the lighter, while settling myself comfortably against his bike.

"Your gig was wonderful," he said, baritone voice laced with no hint of ingenuity. I inclined my head in reply, a slow smile stretching across my face as he responded with one of his own, cloud-like eyes glimmering strangely from underneath wisps of wavy black hair that he'd evidently tried to restrain with a thong.

"New to the Leigh's scene?" I asked, observing his outfit with some interest. A fading, old Pink Floyd concert tee (no self-respecting punk would ever), a worn, but well-fitting leather jacket, blue jeans and boots of dark leather. A welcome change from the awful gleaming, garish metallic paraphernalia that the bikers had been favoring recently. This one seemed to be a lone wolf, too, as the lack of a leering, rowdy gang suggested.

He nodded. "It's been a while since I've visited London,"

I grinned, holding my hand out to him. "I'm Ray Seltzer. If you ever need a tour guide, I'm your gal,"

He laughed, a ricocheting, deep sound that sent shivers down my spine. "Sirius Black, at your service," he said, unexpectedly placing a kiss on the sensitive underside of my wrist.

"Sir-ee-uhs," I said, testing the name on my tongue, hand still held (and engulfed) in the warmth of his own. "Were your parents astronomy enthusiasts?"

His expression remained charming, boyish, yet guarded. The slow, easy smile that curved his lips was unwavering, but his eyes turned stormy as a strange gleam passed through them. "You could say that,"

Sore spot, then.

I crossed my legs, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "I've an interest in studying the stars myself,"

He grinned wolfishly, thumb running over the back of my knuckles. "I'm open to applications, sweetheart,"

I remembered him. He'd been leaning against the counter, straddling the stool with a lazy ease. His mercurial eyes followed me as I sang, smoke sometimes obscuring the sharp lines of his face. An interesting face, that. The bridge of his well-defined nose was pointed upwards, and his full lips framed features Michelangelo would've given limbs to carve; delicate, sloping brows, smooth waves of hair, and the most ridiculously expressive eyes I'd seen on a man. Grey, framed by sooty lashes, holding some imperceptible depth of emotion.

Sirius Black had _secrets_.

Secrets I was determined to uncover.


	2. Poets & Cynics

_**Hyperion: Poets & Cynics**_

* * *

 _Her heart lusts not for love, but thro' and thro'_

 _For blood, as spotted panther lusts in lair;_

 _Gaze not upon her, for her dancing whirl_

 _Turns giddy the fixed gazer presently:_

— _Babylon the Great,_ Christina Rossetti.

* * *

"You play the violin?" I asked, perhaps not masking my shock entirely as he bit the inside of his cheek in what was appearing to be a recurring (but nearly imperceptible) _tic nerveux_.

My hand rested in the crook of his arm as we walked along Regent's Park, cold, nighttime air nipping at my throat. The familiarity and ease with which we'd taken to each other was rather uncanny, to be honest.

I think we both saw pieces of ourselves in each other.

Slightly unhinged, confused. A deep-seated yearning to feel alive, to escape the machinations of fate.

"I... took lessons as a child," he said, pace slackening as my hand imperceptibly tightened around his. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "I haven't touched one in years."

I hummed inconsequentially.

We sat in amiable silence for a while, gazing at the stars, sometimes stealing glances at each other. When our eyes met, his eyes glowed like the silvery-blue flames that licked the bottom of a candle wick.

Beauty is adulterated. We are taught to scorn the superficial, to dismiss vanity.

We are taught to repress our envy at what our gods, gene pools, and serums did not— _cannot_ —bestow upon us. But, in spite of this, it is the unspoken hierarchy;

Beautiful people hold the world pivoted at the tips of their forked tongues.

It is mordant, yes, but that is life.

Upon Primrose Hill, my eyes fell to Canis Major. There it was, the brightest star in our sky. Scorching, glowing. _Burning_.

I turned to him, moonlight fluid and fey upon my face.

* * *

 _And all should cry, Beware! Beware!_

 _His flashing eyes, his floating hair!_

 _Weave a circle round him thrice,_

 _And close your eyes with holy dread_

— _Kubla Khan,_ Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

* * *

The view from Primrose Hill was something.

Muggle London blinked, enticingly, its strangely-shaped buildings buzzing with life and light, like honeycombs.

There was something so reassuring in the mundane. To know that an entire world existed, outside of one's own. A world unshaken.

Indifferent, almost.

The Muggles had their own problems to deal with, I supposed. That did not make it any less surreal. One would think that the novelty would have worn off after a couple of drunken shags with Muggle birds in the back of dingy pubs.

It hadn't.

 _L'amour interdit_ , and all. Rebellion never lost its charm, whether disguised in the form of cigarettes, loud music, and leather, or sneaking sweets behind your family's back as a diabetic seventy-year-old.

This was something new. Not unpleasant, but certainly new. I wasn't especially used to sitting around, stargazing in a companionable silence, forced to retreat into the company of my own thoughts; something I'd been avoiding nearly all my life.

I tended to be impulsive. Not a Heathcliff sort of fellow, to be entirely honest.

But this? This felt perfect. There was something about this strange, wayward tart's manner that put me at ease. Perhaps it was the way she seemed to completely own the skin she wore: she was bold, and _god forbid_ , she seemed every bit as impulsive as I was. A manic fire gleamed a seductive dance in her eyes that would have scared me if it hadn't turned me on.

I felt like a fucking fourteen-year-old schoolboy again. Merlin, her _eyes_. Black as the void though they were, they seemed to catch the light in such ridiculously enticing ways. Her teeth gleamed in her tanned face, eyelashes curling, black as soot above a smooth cheek. Of course, I'd experienced that instantaneous attraction before, a sort of primal magnetism that hooked and pulled.

But it was rarely ever reciprocated, as is the way of the world.

We'd been subconsciously leaning towards each other. _Rebellion in the later years may signify something more disturbing_ , a fragmented memory said, quoting something I'd read off a medical magazine Lily's parents had left lying around their house.

 _Disturbing_ , it echoed, as my lips slid across hers.

Trust is a fickle thing.

At first, it is given freely. It is no blessing; it is no boon. As a child, there is no price attached to the neck of trust.

And then, comes the earthquake, the veritable disaster, the inferno that rages and shakes your belief system and lays the bitter seeds of existentialism and cynicism in its wake.

It is the breaking of that naïve, misplaced trust that is the grotesque sigil of lost innocence. It tears your psyche irreparably, leaving the idealistic concepts of empathy and true love an ersatz fantasy.

My belief in Reg was steadfast. The little boy who'd look up to me with wonderstruck eyes, seeking to imitate my actions, looking to me for guidance, enveloping me in his soft, comforting hugs when I'd have bitter arguments with Walburga and Orion— sweet, unassuming, quietly intellectual Regulus, who, despite the hatefulness drilled into his mind at a tender age, could treat Kreacher with kindness and empathy, something I, even with the didactic moral high-ground that came with being a Gryffindor, could not do.

I believed that he had the strength to break through the poisonous, revolting drivel that had been fed to us. Even after he'd been sorted into Slytherin, I'd tried my best.

When he began to make acquaintances with the unsavory ones, the wizards who delved into the Dark Arts as an enjoyable divertissement, the ones who could barely string together coherent sentences but seemed to have no qualms in throwing about slurs at those they deemed lesser— that was when I decided that I couldn't take it anymore.

When cornered, Reg flashed his eyes at me in a manner that I was entirely unaccustomed to. The sheer malice in his eyes melted what little hope I had.

"Sirius," he said, voice seeped with a quiet rage, "heir, loved by all. Handsome, charming. Effortlessly intelligent." he took on a sardonic, mocking tone, " _He can do no wrong, can he?_ "

My interjections were lost in the sheer magnanimity with which his voice rose. "No," he said, unwaveringly, "you will hear me out. It's the least you can do, after I've spent all these years being—" his jaw clenched, " _spoken for_."

"Even after your multiple indiscretions, Mother and Father refuse to disown you. Our ancestral home, with its priceless heirlooms that have been passed through the ages, all of it― squandered, all because you are careless and... uncultured? Petty and ungrateful? Traitorous?"

Regulus had never been impulsive, as I was. Perhaps that was his downfall.

My knuckles hit his jaw, his face moving with the impact. Muggle means of violence? A personal favourite. Rubbing the salt in the Black family's wound, as the proverb (also Muggle, I noted, with a slightly dazed pleasure) went.

We'd never been particularly violent with each other as children. What few fights we had would end in Reg clinging to Mother Dearest's voluminous robes, tears shining in his big, grey eyes (greener than mine were), while she berated me with a pleased gleam in hers. Every opportunity she saw in tearing him from under my influence meant that she was one step closer into molding him into the perfect vision of an ideal Pureblood male.

Regulus did not respond. He just stood there, as I seethed. As my hand raised to deliver another blow to his impassive face—damn him, he'd always been good at that—his mouth moved.

 _Ferveo_ , he said, caressing the syllables. His façade bore no change as the flesh of my body began to melt, filling the air with the rancid smell of ash and blood. My screams were cut off by a quickly placed Silencing Charm.

 _Traitor_ , his voice echoed in my head, bouncing around the membranous walls, giving impetus to waves of pure, unbridled rage wherever it stuck. TRAITOR. The one thought I'd been trying to quash for years, and it seemed like the world was privy to my struggles.

I belonged nowhere. Not there, with those kindly, sometimes foolish, loyal-to-a-fault Gryffindors. Nor did I belong with my family with their black hearts and even blacker souls. A war was brewing, and even at fifteen, I was aware of it.

I'd probably have melted into a puddle of blood and tissue if not for Remus.

Sometimes, choosing a side seemed like the simplest decision to make.

And times like those, not so much. Blood was thicker than water, after all.

Or so they said.

It hadn't mattered, in the end. I'd made my choice.

And, in the arms of someone who seemed as lost as I was, the struggles seemed to fade. I had made a momentous decision, the answer to that question I'd asked myself two years ago. I would have to live with the consequences, but I was unafraid. All that mattered was this warmth, this visceral spark, this inferno that kindled in my being, my magic tingling as I moved my lips along hers.

And I think she felt it, too.

* * *

 **I hope that was enjoyable, if a bit rushed. But, that's precisely the element I want to bring in― Sirius' infamous impulsiveness coupled with his identity crisis lead him to make slightly questionable, brash decisions, while Ray is not without emotional baggage of her own.**

 **Reviews are much appreciated. I'd bribe you with the usual— chewy cookies, warm, if only virtual hugs, gooey hot cocoa, my firstborn, etc., but it's been done to death, hasn't it?**


End file.
